‘How can you say that? How dare you say that when you never gave me the opportunity to make that decision?’
‘A decision?’ she flicked back at him, and was suddenly lurching away from the door to come and stand directly in front of him. ‘You think it required a decision as to whether you condescended to want Robbie or not? How dare you stand here and be so conceited?’ she said angrily. ‘How dare you be so bloody superior that you can even put up such an argument? You threw me out without a hearing!’ Her golden eyes flicked the accusation at him. ‘That was your decision, Rafiq. Anything at all that came after that was my decision! And I did not decide to love Robbie. I just do love him. Can you possibly understand the difference?’
‘Jamie,’ he installed into the argument. ‘As a mother you love without question, no matter who is the father of your child. But a father needs to trust he is the father before he can dare to love! You slept with Jamie within a week of sleeping with me.’ His hand flicked out to toss that claim at her. ‘You cannot possibly have known, therefore, which of us was his father until the boy was born.’
‘Is this leading somewhere?’ she demanded coldly.
Was it? Rafiq asked himself. ‘Yes,’ he hissed. ‘Once you knew for sure that I was Robert’s father you had a moral duty to get in touch with me.’
Nothing—he received absolutely nothing back from that final accusation. Her rebellious eyes held his steady; her mouth remained defiantly shut. She had planted her hands on hips and was taking him on as if she was easily up to his weight in a battle. Frustration attached itself to his ribs and his fingers. He wanted to reach out with those fingers and shake her into talking—and he wanted to wrap her to his aching ribs and just kiss her senseless!
He sighed, wishing he knew what it was that was actually driving him here, but he didn’t. There were so many feelings trampling around inside him that he couldn’t distinguish one from the other. His gaze shifted around a room that was not dissimilar to a room his father had in Rahman. He looked at the map again and saw the years he’d been robbed of by his own blind stubbornness represented on the desk, and also in the sound of his son’s voice unwittingly telling him how William Portreath had attempted to give them to the child.
It hurt. This house hurt. This room, the dead man who still lingered inside it—this woman and her refusal to admit that she owed him something for what she’d taken away!
‘I need to get out of here,’ he decided suddenly. It was that quick, that desperate, and he just stepped around her and walked away.
As he made for the door Melanie felt the bitterness rise up and try to strangle her. ‘So you still walk away from promises you make.’ She slid the words deridingly after him. ‘What happened to your “united we stand” speech, Rafiq?’ she taunted. ‘Or the promise you gave to your son that you would still be here when he comes downstairs?’
Rigid back, rigid shoulders; he went still by the door. ‘I am finding it impossible to justify that for seven years my son has been deprived of his right to know a father’s love,’ he said harshly. ‘And that William Portreath stole something from my father that did not belong to him!’
‘William didn’t steal anything from anyone. I did.’
He turned to look at her. Pale but still perfect, Melanie thought painfully. Still loftily superior, but struggling with it. ‘William Portreath aided and abetted you to keep my son hidden away from me!’ He stated it clearly.
Melanie pulled in some air, then made herself say what she knew she didn’t want to say. ‘On the day Robbie was born William begged me to tell you about our son and offered me any money I might need to fight you in court,’ she confessed. ‘I refused.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I don’t care what you believe,’ she returned. ‘I know it is the truth. This has never had anything to do with money. It was to do with a man who could walk away from his promises and never—ever—look back! Now here you are, intending to do the same thing again. Only this time you’re going to break a small boy’s heart instead of a stupid young woman’s!’
‘You never loved me,’ he said, denouncing that claim. ‘It was always the money! You were always only looking for a rich man to take you out of the hole you lived in!’
‘And I chose you?’ Melanie gasped out. ‘Think back, Rafiq, and tell me who it was that did the chasing! Because I recall you virtually laying siege to me!’
‘Tactics,’ he said cynically. ‘You played the game perfectly.’
‘No.’ Melanie denied that. ‘If I’d been playing the tactical game I would have made you wait for sex until the ring was safely on my finger. But not me—not this gullible fool!’ A shudder of self-disgust ripped through her. ‘I gave you it all—just as I gave it to you again today—and if you think I am proud of myself for that, then think again, because you have a real knack for making me despise myself!’
She turned away from his stunned expression, despising herself all the more for letting fly at him. What was she trying to do here? Bury her pride completely? She lifted a hand to cover her mouth with it, caught the glitter of a diamond and with tears suddenly burning in her eyes she wrenched the ring from her finger and stepped up to hand it back to him.
The swine took it—he took it! ‘Now you can leave,’ she whispered shakily.
Footsteps suddenly sounded on the upper landing, then came clattering down the stairs. Both stopped breathing and went perfectly still. It lasted only a couple of seconds and Rafiq was the first to recover. His eyes gave a flash like lightning—the only warning Melanie received before she was being crushed in his arms. Heat drenched her body from the burn of the kiss; tension ricocheted through her muscles as she tried to fight him. In a single smooth movement he’d caught her mouth and was lifting them both out of the way from the door as their son pushed it open. Robbie just stood there, staring at the fascinating sight of his mother kissing his newly found father.
Deliberate. The whole swift, nerve-shaking move had been a deliberate one aimed to make a particular impression on their highly impressionable son. When Rafiq finally released her mouth Melanie found herself staring at the hand she had splayed out against his snow-white shirt front. Somewhere between the grab and the kiss Raf
iq had also slid the ring back onto her finger. It was now sparkling at her in much the same way as her son was sparkling.
‘You were kissing my mum,’ Robbie accused.
‘Mmm,’ Rafiq agreed. ‘I like kissing her, and she likes me doing it…’
Melanie’s gaze jumped from the ring to his face. Those devil-black eyes were glinting down on her with lazy triumph. Deny it if you can, that mocking glint challenged. She was breathless—helpless—literally stewing in her own foolish response. And what made it all so much worse was that Rafiq knew it. He released a low, soft, throaty laugh, caught the hand wearing the ring, then swung them both to face their small witness. ‘We have been talking about what to do about us,’ he informed his son smoothly. ‘How would you feel about us becoming a proper family, Robert?’
Robert. Melanie blinked at the Robert she’d only ever heard William use. Then she blinked again at her son, who was suddenly wearing a smile that lit his whole face. ‘Will you come here and live with us?’ Robbie demanded in breathless excitement.
Rafiq’s brief moment of stillness was Melanie’s only reward for the web she was allowing herself to be wrapped in. He hadn’t thought as far on as where they were going to live. Then he said, ‘Yes. Tonight, I think. What do you think?’ he deferred to his star-struck son.